Specifically, California, Chicago, New York, Nashville, TN or El Paso, TX, because the Baskin-Robbins’ there are giving away free soft-serve ice cream this coming Wednesday to knocked-up ladies.

Yep, it’s Bump Day 2008.

While I think anything free is totally awesome, it’s sorta sexist, isn’t it? Do they do a similar day for Dad-to-be’s? Or maybe men with guts who look pregnant?

And what if you aren’t showing yet (as many first-time moms don’t until even five months or so)? Bring in the pee stick? That’s a wonderful scene to ponder, isn’t it? Hormonal, hungry women lined up with urine-soaked tests in their hands, demanding free ice cream.

 …when one has ribbon?

While I didn’t get a booth at either the Mamas and Chicks Show or Mompreneur Market this spring, I did donate two stuffed gift baskets to raffle off.

This morning one finally went in the mail to Theresa in Oshawa, and the other was picked up for Andrea of i’mnotsurebutshewasveryexcited.

I have to thank the following generous local businesses who donated products. Please support them if and when you can, as they help keep this site going, are Durham-based and Canadian and make things especially for you!

• Shelby from Natural Earth Tones natural body care in Oshawa
• Alexandria of Clippopotamus hair and soother clips in Pickering
• Tamarra of Lollipops & Lizards children’s boutique in Pickering
• Kristen of T Bag & Co. gourmet market totes in Uxbridge

This morning Eric and I had a Google chat about poop. Specifically around, how I, um, had to go, and his assertion that girls don’t poop, or if they do, that it smells like rainbows.

We are easing quite fluidly into a new routine at Chez McDougall-Foster, the Eric is Around the House All the Time new way of life.

He’s set up in his “office” in the basement (he picked his stuff up from work yesterday, and even brought his family photos downstairs), where we communicate via the aforementioned chat and various foot-stomping codes. We meet for a lunch date around 11:30 — the latest I can go without food — and watch Cold Case Files and American Justice together on the couch, our crossed feet touching on the padded ottoman.

For Lucy’s (and ours, too, but more for her) sake, we are trying to keep things as normal as possible. That means Eric’s alarm still goes off at 7 a.m., he still gets Lucy up while I eek out as many extra minutes of sleep as possible, he heads to the shower, and I stay in bed with my arm slung around Lucy’s tiny waist as she watches Rolly Pollie Ollie until the shower water stops and I haul myself out of bed.

I still do breakfast, and he still does morning drop-off. So far, Lucy hasn’t batted an eye. When she says her usual “Daddy go to work,” we smile and nod, because Daddy is going to work trying to find a new job. I’ve started telling her that Daddy’s working from home for a while now, trying to justify his presence when we arrive from daycare.

I think she’s too young to really know what’s up, but bet she’ll find it hard when he does find work and he’s back to his usual hours. Will wait and see, I guess.

For now, I’m loving the extra company and time with him. I do have some adjusting to do, however: Eric walked into our bedroom mid-morning to find me making smelly rainbows in the en suite bathroom with the door wide open.

Whoops.

It’s true what they say that you take less photos of the second (and subsequent) babies.

This is only the second photo of me gestating the Parasite2, taken this morning when I was outside gardening (yes, that’s my gardening hat, which I wear in the front yard where people see me, too, much to Eric’s embarrassment). With Lucy, we took a pic each week from the day I peed positive right up until moments before leaving for the hospital.

Being pregnant the second time around isn’t as…magical as it was the first time. I know what to expect. I know, generally, what each month feels like, what labour feels like, what hell — and excitement and wonder — the first few weeks are. There isn’t that anticipation of the unknown this time around.

I hope this child isn’t resentful of that. I know second (and subsequent) children who are. But I know more who aren’t, who know that love doesn’t come in the form of photos.

Lucy is engaging in love-hate relationship with her father.

It started a few months ago, and I keep thinking it’s a phase and waiting for her to grow out of it. But she hasn’t, and it’s starting to drive us nuts.

(And while I absolutely love 2, the following scenarios are eye-rolling, head-banging, annoyingly, exasperatingly maddening enough for me to wish for the newborn days when at least we could stuff her in a blanket and she’d shut-up be quiet for 20 minutes.)

This evening was a series of examples that are repeated in various forms every. single. day.:

• I pick Lucy up from daycare. While she’s excited that Daddy’s in the car, she will not give him a hug. He cannot put her in the car seat. “Mummy’s turn!” she cries, turning and clinging to me. She actually sheds tears, as if her father’s touch will burn or cause her eyeballs to melt.
• Lucy and I were sitting on the couch, and I asked Eric to please pass me a kleenex. Lucy jumps off the couch, crying, yelling, because she has to get the damn tissue. Eric couldn’t even hand it to her — oh no, she had to take it out of the box and bring it over to me.
• After dinner, we decide to take Spencer for a walk. Eric, who usually does the evening stroll with the dog, likes to push the stroller when we head out as a break from the joy that is dog poop picker-upper. But Eric took one step towards the stroller, and Lucy was howling: “Mummy push the tollar! Mummy do! Mummy’s turn!”

And no, none of this happens when I’m not around, such as Wednesday evenings when I’m out with the ladies.

My theory is this: When Eric comes came home from work in the evenings, Lucy is interpreting this as him intruding on her and I’s time together. Instead of undivided Mummy attention, I’m now split between her and Eric. (This whole issue stems around this, too.) So, Lucy punishes Eric.

This makes sense on weekday evenings, but Lucy is starting to carry it over to the weekends, too. This past weekend, while away at Eric’s Mom’s, it was almost always either “Mummy’s turn” or even more frequently, “Gramie’s turn.”

While Eric is The Adult (and therefore can process and understand toddler ridiculousness), the actions of The Child can be quite hurtful. I mean, you can only be rejected so many times before it starts to sting, grown-up or not. Tonight, as Lucy trotted over to me with the kleenex clutched in her hand, Eric mock raised his fist in the air, waving it at her back.

Any sort of Mummy smugness over being the preferred parent has long worn off. Now it is reaching levels of exasperation, as I become The Only One Who Can Do Anything, Ever. For our household’s well being, Eric and I both need to know that the other can take care of our child(ren). Plus there are times when I just cannot do something for Lucy, and she has to learn that Mummy cannot always be there every single second.

So far, we do not force Lucy to accept Eric doing things she is insistent I do, as this just sends her spiraling out of control (unless I physically cannot do it, or am engaged in something I can’t immediately stop). We also do not want to build further animosity or resentment towards him. And we’ve carved out exclusive Lucy-Eric time — the half hour or so between the end of dinner and bedtime — for the two to bond and play together without me.

But I tell you, it’s still hard being the rational adult. I just wish Lucy would understand us when we say that Daddy can do everything Mummy can, that he loves Lucy as much as Mummy does. We’ve sparingly told her that it hurts Daddy’s feelings, too, to no impact.

Is anyone else going through this, or have you gone through it? Those with older kids, please tell me this is a phase and will end soon. Any thoughts on where this is coming from and what you’d do are welcomed, too.

I know that today, the second Sunday in May, is Mother’s Day. It’s The Day for us moms.

But isn’t this the real Mother’s Day? Not even a day, but a single moment in time when mother and child first lock eyes and see each other for the first time? And even though you’re cold and scared and bewildered and in shock and awe and wonder and there are far too many people between your legs, it suddenly hits you that you are a mother and you actually helped create another human being?

I can still feel that moment, can feel a hand around my heart when my world changed forever because she entered it. It fades away with the routine of daily life — the meals and chores and laundry and baths and “Stop licking your hands and smearing them on your feet that’sogross!” — but rears up when a stranger is in her midst and she buries her face in my chest, clutching my soft belly for protection. When she is curled on her side, asleep and vulnerable and at her most beautiful. When she grasps my face in her still-chubby hands and plants a slobbery Bunny Kiss on my forehead.

That moment is here today. And as much as I loved sleeping in and a greasy breakfast out and no diaper changes, I’ve loved it more when she’s looked up and said, “Hi, Mummy.”

We’re heading to Eric’s Mom’s tomorrow morning for a over-due visit, and a much-needed hiatus from home before we start Job Hunt Spring Edition 2008 on Monday.

Lucy is excited to go to Gramie’s house, where she promises to give her big hugs and kisses.

I’ve already called sleep-in rights for Sunday (Eric, over my shoulder: “No you’re not!”), something my husband can hardly refuse considering it’s Mother’s Day (“Oh. Right. Grrr.”).

Eric and Lucy came home from their forced house vacancy during Jen’s shower last weekend with a mysterious rectangular box stuffed inside a reusable shopping bag. I am intruiged. And Lucy came home from daycare Wednesday with a hand painted pot, which I absolutely adore. It’s so true that when you become a mom, the best gifts are those created by your children’s own hands.

If it’s true that Mother’s Day gets harder when you get married (especially when said mothers are in different cities, hours away), it becomes even harder still when you become a mother yourself — torn between wanting to spend time with and honour your own precious parent on this special day, and wanting to be pampered and loved by your own new family.

How do all of you handle this? Split the day between everyone? Take turns each year? I wonder how my own mother and mother-in-law handled this when they became parents?

I think next year, having a toddler and chubby parasite baby — providing the only two grandchildren for each mom, so far — will have earned me the right to my first sleep-in at home and breakfast in bed.

I hope you all have a great weekend and wonderful Mother’s Day with your families — no matter how or with whom you celebrate it!

You know it’s bad when your husband calls you from his cell phone on a Wednesday morning at 10:30.

Eric got laid off today.

There is a story, because isn’t there always? But his work, like mine, does not belong here for the most part. But it wasn’t performance related, and he’s leaving with references and a month’s salary and benefits.

I’ve told him I could hire him as an un-paid office assistant. This afternoon he got the cordless phone for me, and demanded “payment” in a form not fit for this family website. (For the record, I did a reverse dash-n-dine and made him leave without paying the bill).

At least we have not lost our sense of humours. At least not yet. We’ll see how tomorrow morning goes when the alarm goes off and there’s no place for him to go. And where we’re at in a month when his pay runs out and we start to dip into our savings diligently put aside to make up for my loss of income come October.

But we’re nowhere near there yet, and I am an optimist. Because everything in life happens for a reason, even when the reasons suck ass.

Enough people have emailed and written about this now that it must be true: Zellers is giving store credit if you return any Avent products because of the issues surrounding BPA. You don’t need a receipt or packaging or anything.

Rumour has it the store is only doing this until Friday.

Has anyone done this yet? And what are your thoughts on breast pumps? I have an Avent one, and really liked it for what small pumping I did (and plan to do after the Parasite2 arrives). I plan to just pump into a bottle, then transfer straight into freezer bags or BPA-free bottles for feeding. I don’t know if it’s worth it to find and adjust to a brand new one for the few minutes the milk will be in the bottle?